


Family Dynamic

by 221b_hound



Series: Triptych [6]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Family Dynamics, Johnlockary - Freeform, Multi, Polyamory, Threats of Violence, Uncle Mycroft, Uncle-Niece Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-19
Updated: 2016-08-19
Packaged: 2018-08-09 17:48:21
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,605
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7811380
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/221b_hound/pseuds/221b_hound
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sherlock, John and Mary are taking their daughters to the park for a treat with Mycroft. A sudden, savage attack is launched - and as suddenly thwarted. There are new family dynamics here - and old ones being rewritten.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Family Dynamic

Four year old Ada Lily clung to her blond Daddy but waved across to her Baba on the other side. Baba held tiny Mae Joy in a baby sling across his body. Mae – named for a violinist and a doctor-dancer who’d been into space – had pale skin and large eyes and a crown of black curly hair that glowed with hidden auburn in the sunlight.

Sherlock held a hand over her little face to shield her, and couldn’t take his eyes away from her sweet bow lips and plump pink cheeks, and avoided obstacles on the path due to his excellent peripheral vison and sheer good luck.

“Baba!” Ada called to him, “Baba!!”

The plan had been that John was Daddy and Sherlock, Papa, but Ada couldn’t quite pronounce ‘p’ at the start, and then Mary had sung to her about Baa Baa Black Sheep. Ada had tangled her fingers in her Papa’s woolly black hair, sang “BaaBaa! Baba!” and giggled fit to burst and he’d been Baba ever since.

“Baba!” Ada yelled again, “Is Mae awake?”

Sherlock cast a sneaky glance over to Ada. “What do you think?”

“Mae’s making boobly boobly!” declared Ada – her way of saying the baby was making bubbly little noises to herself, “HELLO MAE!!!”

If Mae wasn’t awake after that, it was a miracle.

“Say hello to Mae, Baba!” Ada insisted, wagging her hand up at her tiny sister, “Daddy, say hello to Mae! Mama! SAY HELLO TO MAE!”

Mama was always the final arbiter if Baba and Daddy weren’t doing what Ada wanted, but her fathers laughed at her.

“Hello, Mae-be Baby!” John crooned over Ada’s head.

Sherlock lifted Mae in his arms and pressed his nose to her hair. “Hello Mae.”

Ada bounced in her Daddy’s arms then threw herself backwards, secure in the knowledge Daddy wouldn’t let go, so she could look at Mama upside down. “Say hello to _me_ , Mama!”

“Hello, scamp.” Mary tickled Ada’s chin.

Ada squirmed and giggled. “I’m Ada!”

Sherlock reached over to tickle Ada’s chin too. “Scamp,” he told her.

Ada wriggled and squealed in excitable protest, and then saw her uncle standing by the pavilion, leaning on his umbrella and with his secret Happy To See You smile.

“Uncle Myyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy,” she hollered across the intervening space, “I’m _Ada_ , not Scamp!”

John put their daughter on the path and she hurtled as fast as her little legs would take her towards her uncle. Just as she was about to come a cropper, Mycroft stepped in to scoop her up. He contrived to be both very serene and proper, and very, very fond.

“You are Ada Lily Holmes Watson Morstan, and you are a scamp,” he informed her solemnly.

“I’m a _scamp_!” she declared proudly, “Say hello to Mae! She’s my brand new sister. She was sick on Daddy today and Baba played his violin for her and Mama fell asleep and I want ice cream.”

All caught up on the important news, Ada waved to Mae. She wriggled till Mycroft put her back on the path and ran in circles around him chanting, “Unca-My-and-me-are-having-ICE-cream, ICE-cream.”

Mary grinned and waved back and said, under her voice to her husbands, “She’s got John’s ears and my eyes and your energy, Sherlock.”

Sherlock, who had noticed this, quietly preened.

“Oi, you! Fucking Sherlock fucking Holmes!”

It happened so fast. Too fast. Sherlock saw the man dart out from the trees to his right, divining his violent intent immediately, but the bastard was already on them.

Oldacre’s brother, from the Norwood business. Same build, same accent, same foul violent temper, And Christ, he had a _hammer…_ and his arm was raised and coming down…

The only thing that mattered was Mae. Sherlock dropped to his knees, curled over the baby and trusted his family.

His family did not disappoint.

Looking through his black-sheep fringe, he saw:

Mycroft glide towards them, flipping his umbrella till he held the ferrule and whipping the hook of it around Oldacre’s upraised wrist and tugging. Oldacre was pulled backwards and off balance.

John stepped into danger to stand over Sherlock and their daughter and powered a short, sharp fist right into the space that Oldacre’s face occupied. His face being in the way, John’s fist broke cartilage and Oldacre he went down howling with pain.

Mary snatch the hammer out of the bastard’s hand before he’d hit the ground and even tender with her healing stitches, she landed with her knee in his diaphragm and the claws of the hammer under Oldacre’s jaw, behind the hinge of his ear, pressing hard while Oldacre wheezed, high-pitched and terrified at the implacable fury in her face.

 “Not in front of Ada, Mary,” said Mycroft softly.

The stony rage in her was suddenly gone. Mary flung the hammer aside and tumbled onto the path, where she kneeled, a hand across her sore stomach, and looking around frantically for her babies.

And there, John had already scooped Ada into his arms and delivered her to Sherlock, who sat cradling Mae on the path. Ada pushed into his lap and clutched onto him, sobbing. Mary began to crawl to them, but then John was there to help to steady her, until all five of them were huddled together on the path, kissing each other, kissing the children, saying, _hush hush, it’s all right,  the bad man’s gone, it’s all right. Sssh, sweetie, shush now Mae, everything’s fine now._

Oldacre tried to sit up but there was someone at his back and the claw of the hammer at his throat again.

“I can break your jaw four ways from this angle,” said Mycroft Holmes in a terrifyingly civil voice, “Also your clavicle. Certainly most of your teeth.” He said the last word with a hard T and a hiss on the ‘th’. “I’m disinclined to do so in front of the children, obviously, but I’m almost certain I can do it without you making a sound.”

In fact, the hand not holding the hammer was pushed firm against Oldacre’s windpipe.

“If you move one fraction of an inch, I will test that hypothesis. Do you understand?”

Oldacre couldn’t even nod. He simply made a muted, strangled sound, and remained very still. The vicious bastard was, frankly, relieved when four men in black came and took him away moments later.

Then Mycroft Holmes walked unhurriedly over to the little family now standing on the path, leaned over to his niece Ada, in her Daddy’s arms, and said. “I believe we have a date for ice cream. What flavour would you like?”

Ada blinked at him. Sherlock and John and Mary blinked at him. A collective breath was taken, held, exhaled, and a collective decision made, unspoken, that to make a larger issue over something so sudden and so brief would be to cement it as frightening in Ada’s mind.

“Choc’late,” said Ada, a little uncertain.

“Chocolate it is, then. I like strawberry myself.”

“You like all the flavours,” said Sherlock, and it almost sounded like a grumble except it wasn’t, and he was brushing his nose against Mae’s hair as she grizzled in his arms.

“This is true, I like all the flavours,” agreed Mycroft urbanely.

“Mama likes vanilla,” said Ada more confidently, and she didn’t see the way her three parents all kind of smirked at that. “Baba likes chock chipmunk” (choc-chip-mint was also beyond her just now) “and Daddy eats Baba’s chipmunk!”

Nobody even knew what that could possibly be a euphemism for, but they were all so relieved they started giggling and couldn’t stop. Ada was delighted and sang a song about chock chipmunks until she got busy with the huge ice cream sundae her Uncle My got for her, and her parents didn’t even tell her she wasn’t supposed to have so much or to eat it nicely or anything. Naturally, it got everywhere.

Later, while Mary and John were in the parents’ room cleaning up Ada’s face, hands, dress and shoes - and the ice cream that had somehow got smeared in Mae’s hair - Sherlock sat next to his brother and pressed a hand to his elbow.

The conversation was, like so many had been, without words. Sherlock knew at the end that this Oldacre would be spending a long time away with his murderous brother. Without bail. Without parole. Without, it was entirely possible, ever actually going to court. Sherlock preferred not to ask; Mycroft certainly preferred not to elaborate.

_Not in front of the children._

Indeed.

Finally, Mycroft patted Sherlock’s wrist and said, “Mae looks a great deal like you did at that age.”

Sherlock blinked and then he smiled at his older brother, a beaming light of a smile that Mycroft remembered from when Sherlock was small.

And on impulse, Mycroft squeezed Sherlock’s wrist and said, out loud so it could never be denied, “I will protect them. In all the ways I didn’t protect you. I won’t interfere, I swear. But anything they ever need is theirs.”

Sherlock sobered. He nodded. He accepted Mycroft’s offering. Then he grinned cheekily.

“How do you feel about babysitting?”

Alarm was Mycroft’s foremost response, but he checked it at once, because at its back was quite another feeling.

“I would be honoured,” he said, lifting his chin.

When Sherlock, John and Mary gathered up their little girls and waved goodbye and without fuss agreed to let Mycroft’s driver take them the short distance home, Mycroft sat in the tea shop and sipped tea and wondered, when, exactly, he had become part of a _family_ again. And when he had started to _like_ it.


End file.
